Juvalia & You Launches Indian Operations

Juvalia & You, a Berlin-based online fashion jewelry company incubated by Springstar, has launched its Indian operations by opening an India specific portal Juvalia.in, reports iamwire. Headed by Chaitanya Aggarwal, the company has setup an office in Delhi and will be operated by Juvalia Marketing Pvt. Ltd, owned by members of Harish Bahl’s Smile Group. The company has apparently raised an investment of around $15 million till now.

The company currently has two types of business models – A Fashion E-commerce site and a direct marketing approach.

E-Commerce site: The site currently offers fashion jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, brooches and hairbands. Users can either sort the jewelry by name, price or position or click on any specific jewelry to view more information and check its availability. Users can also browse to any specific category through the sidebar or search through the keyword-based search box. Among the payment modes offered are Cash On Delivery, Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking and Cash Card (Beam Cash, Done Card, ICash card and ItzCash). The company also seems to be offering free shipping at present.

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Direct Marketing: Juvalia allows users to sign up as ‘stylists’ to sell products in social gatherings and earn sales commission of around 25-35%. Besides this, the company also offers discounts and rewards in order to incentivize the stylists.

As stated earlier, this company has been incubated by Springstar, formed by Klaus Hommels, Oliver Jung and Smile Interactive’s Harish Bahl. Interestingly, Smile Interactive already operates an invitation-only fashion e-commerce portal FashionAndYou.com and an online clothing portal Freecultr. We wonder if there will be some sort of integration between these these portals in the future.

Copycat? The company is closely modeled on the San Franscisco based Stella & Dot. Interestingly, Magnus Resch, the managing director of Springstar, has admitted in an interview that the venture is a copycat and the idea to open a similar company came after Stella & Dot raised $37 million from Sequoia Capital in January 2011. The company has since opened offices in Germany, Russia, Brazil and India.

Other players: Last week, former Reliance Trends CEO, Arun Sirdeshmukh, and Darpan Munjal, President of LeapMatrix had launched Fashionara.com, an online fashion store that offers merchandise from premium and luxury fashion brands across apparel, footwear and accessories. The company claimed to have brand tie-ups with close to 50 players and had raised an undisclosed amount in a Series-A funding, from Helion Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other players in this space include Myntra, Jabong, and Ambarish Murthy’s e-commerce venture Pepperfry.